Contents

Abstract

Previous studies have found national averages of teacher absenteeism in
developing countries that range from 3 percent to 27 percent. However,
within countries absenteeism is larger in poorer, more isolated schools,
contributing to unequal educational opportunities. The purpose of this
paper is to report on a systematic review of research on the
effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing teacher attendance in
developing countries, as measured by the rate of teacher attendance.
Whenever data are available we also estimate the impact of these
programmes on student achievement.

After a comprehensive search process, we identified nine studies that
met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The
interventions that these studies analysed could be classified into two
broad categories: (i) direct interventions, where the main goal was to
reduce teacher absenteeism, and (ii) indirect interventions, where
reducing teacher absenteeism was an intermediate objective or a
mechanism to reach the ultimate goal of improving student achievement.
For the statistical synthesis of the studies, we did not consider three
studies because not all the information necessary to calculate their
effect sizes was available. Given the small number of included primary
studies and the different types of intervention design across them, we
did not perform a metaanalysis to synthesise information across studies
and we only present the effect sizes of included studies in forest
plots.

Our findings show that direct interventions coupling monitoring systems
with rewards have a positive and statistically significant effect on
teacher attendance and no effect on student achievement. For indirect
interventions, we found that involving the community in students'
education and providing incentives schemes for students had a positive
and significant effect on teacher attendance, but neither strategy had
an effect on student achievement.

Although improving attendance is not straightforward, the results of the
systematic review provide evidence that a combination of monitoring and
incentives seems effective in tackling teacher absenteeism. At the same
time, the systematic review makes it clear that a teacher in the
classroom is an important but insufficient prerequisite for improving
achievement. We suggest that the quality of the pedagogical processes
taking place within the classroom is also crucial to explain students'
achievement.

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